GRIEVING father Tariq Jahan, whose defiant calls for calm following the murder of his son dramatically halted the Birmingham riots, has insisted that he was no hero.

Mr Jahan bravely spoke out hours after his 21 year-old son Haroon was killed in a car smash in Dudley Road just yards from his Winson Green home.

Known to friends as ‘Harry’, Mr Jahan told how the young man was protecting properties from rioters as violence spread from Birmingham city centre in a second night of disorder.

Brothers Shahzad Ali, aged 30, and 31-year-old Abdul Musavir, also died with him in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Rather than resort to fury and retaliation, Mr Jahan rose above the hatred and tension and urged members of the community not to retaliate and to stay at home.

“I wasn’t doing it for the publicity,” he said. “I was doing it to try to bring the community together. I just want an end to the tension here.

“We are all the same people living in the same city and the same country.

“I hope and prey no other father or mother has to go through the grief we have gone through.

“It’s time to put an end to the riots and it’s time for it to stop.”

Mr Jahan’s heartfelt appeal for restraint on Wednesday was seen as pivotal to the respite in rioting which had gripped the city. A close family friend, who asked not to be named, described Mr Jahan as a ‘saint’ for adopting such a tolerant and positive stance in the face of such tragedy.

And Mr Jahan and his wife have received messages and calls of support from strangers all over the world.

He said: “The amount of sympathy we have received has been overwhelming.

“We have had emails and calls from people in Australia, Dubai, Malaysia, Japan and Singapore.

“I am very grateful and humbled by it.”

Mr Jahan, a driver for an electrical firm, refused to blame the police and the Government for the death of the younger of his two sons, who he said would live on in his memory.

The Muslim father, whose parents came from Kashmir and Pakistan, added: “My wife, as you can imagine, is pretty shaken up but it’s surprising how well she’s handling it.

“His brother misses him deeply because they worked together and trained at the same boxing club.

“His sister – her faith is keeping her strong.

“She and her brother were like two peas in a pod.

“We will call him a ‘Shahid’ [a witness who gives his life out of passion for truth] for defending his community and that is how we will remember him.”

Meanwhile Abdul Nasir Khan, first cousin of Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir, said the family were still coming to terms with their tragedy.

“They are still grieving and still can’t get over it,” he said.

“It’s just such a big shock.”

Abdul said the brothers’ father Ghazanfar Ali was trying to adopt a positive approach, like Mr Jahan.

He said: “Our uncle’s a wise man and does not want to lose any more people from his family.

“We approached a lot of the people in the streets after what happened and appealed for calm.

“The only way to do this is to allow the police to carry out their investigation.

“Things have calmed down and hopefully it won’t escalate any further.We have had support from different communities and faiths all over the city and the country.”

Another relative of the two brothers, Mohammed Shakiel, said they were ‘heroes’ who had died defending their community.

“I was with them all day right up until the last minute in hospital,” he said. “The only thing they were concerned with was protecting people’s properties.

“No matter what race or religion, all they were concerned about was protecting the welfare and properties of other people.

“These are the people we need to be calling heroes.

“They had a future ahead of them and gave it up for the sake of others.”

Mr Shakiel lambasted the police for focusing their attentions on protecting big commercial buildings in the city rather than the livelihoods of small independent traders in the suburbs.

He said: “These brothers were doing what the riot police should have been doing. They were protecting the streets, the police were busy protecting corporate businesses which are insured. These lives were not insured and we will never get them back.”

Kabir Khan Isakhel, the lawyer for the brothers’ family, said the tragedy had brought together people of different faiths and from various parts of the city.

“The family has had numerous calls from every part of the city,” he said.

“From the Sikh community in Smethwick and Handsworth, there have been calls from all the community leaders offering their condolences. There is no racial or religious tension.”

Mr Isakhel was critical of the police’s handling of the fatal car crash.

“There was time for the police to be present in the area and they were not there,” he said.